


Days of Future Adaptation

by Fantasyenabler



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasyenabler/pseuds/Fantasyenabler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armando's abilities meant he wasn't so easily killed as Shaw and the others might have thought.  However, when it ends up taking him decades to get back to himself, he ends up discovering a short cut that's fairly easy for him to adapt to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Days of Future Adaptation

**Author's Note:**

> I came to this couple sort of late in the game, given that I refused to watch First Class until January of last year, a few months before Days of Future Past came out. (What can I say? I'm an old school comics fan who bore a grudge over the way that movie disregarded the comics.) However, I found myself liking it despite myself, and hating the fact that Darwin died the way he did. Thus, I have scoured the Internet for as much fic for this couple as I can possibly find, and having read it all, I am now writing my own.
> 
> I've given in and done the Tumblr thing. It's here at  
> http://fanfichasruinedmylife.tumblr.com/

Dust has no memories.  It doesn’t run away from places that cause it to remember moments of pain.  Nor does it cluster in areas that remind it of people it used to know.  Instead, it floats.  It wanders.  And it goes wherever the winds decide it should go.

Thus, the cloud of dust that hangs unnoticed in the gray-colored sky has no excuse for why it waits and watches as an army of machines tears its way through a group of beings made of ice and fire and lightning strikes.  It only knows that it can feel that something is going to happen here, something it is going to want to see.

It waits and watches so intently that it almost misses it when the energy surge passes through, carrying with it a pattern of thoughts so single-minded that the dust is reading them almost before it realizes that it’s evolved the ability to do so.

 _Change the past_ , the energy surge says.  _Have to go back and stop this.  Have to find them all and change the past_.        

 _Yes_ , the cloud of dust thinks.  _Yes, that’s a good idea_.

And so the dust follows the energy surge right up to the edge of the time barrier.

It follows, it pauses, and as the energy surge begins to disappear, the dust imitates and adapts.

Then gradually, it fades away, until all that is left hanging in the sky are some columns of black smoke and the white jet trails of the last wave of the advancing machines.

 

The sky outside the window is dark, it notices, as it wakes up in a new place and a new form.  No, not a _new_ form, it realizes.  This is its _old_ form.  A humanoid being with a head and arms and legs and other parts that it had almost forgotten were necessary to make him _him_.

To make him _Armando_ , he thinks, as he sits up in bed and looks around the moonlit room.

It’s pretty bare.  Nothing on the concrete walls, and almost nothing in the room itself.  Just a chest of drawers, a single door, and a twin bed pushed up against the back wall, with its headboard lying directly underneath the one small, curtain-less window.  The room is cleaner than Armando remembers keeping his own one-room apartment, no clothes lying on the floor, no dirty dishes left sitting out anywhere, and it takes him a minute to recall exactly why he was living this way.

 _The CIA_ , he thinks.  This room was a part of the compound he’d stayed in after he joined the team of mutants that Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr were putting together for the CIA.  He’d met them in his cab, and they’d shown him what they could do, and he’d agreed to help them go after this cat that was threatening the whole damn world, this guy named _Sebastian Shaw—_

“Damn,” he says, the word soft and quiet, and yet still echoing in the silence of the room.  He stares down at where his hands are clutching the sheets and forces them to uncurl, the fingers pulling back to reveal white cotton laced with faint pink stains, the result of the divots he’d left in his palms when he’d dug his fingernails in a bit too deeply.  The wounds themselves are already healed, his mutation having kicked in and taken care of them, but still, they shouldn’t have happened in the first place, and probably wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t…if he hadn’t forgotten….

If he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to have a body again, he thinks.  If he hadn’t spent so many more decades existing as dust than he actually did existing as _Armando_.

And that’s something he owes this Shaw guy for, he guesses.  Something he should want to get him back for, something he should want to avenge.

Except…that’s not why he wanted to go back in time, he thinks.  The cloud of dust he’d become wasn’t able to hold any grudges.  It had forgotten how Shaw had destroyed its humanoid body, forgotten it so well that even now with all of his memories flooding back to him, it’s not the first thing on his mind.

 No, the first thing on his mind is an image, a picture of a young man with blond hair and blue eyes, standing there with his hand out and a horrified expression on his face.  An expression that Armando recognizes, that he’s seen before, on the faces of people standing around crime scenes back in his old neighborhood.  People who’d kept on living and breathing and walking and talking, but it only took one glance into their eyes to see that they were broken.

That expression was why Armando had come back.  And why he has to make sure things turn out differently this time.  

Not for Armando’s sake, but for _Alex’s_.  Because that boy had trusted Armando in so many ways, and he hates the thought of how he misused that trust, of how he misjudged and led Alex into a situation where he was guaranteed to get hurt.

  Hates it so much that it’s all he can do to keep himself from jumping out of bed, crossing the room, and running down the hall to knock on Alex’s door.

Thankfully, it’s the thought of what he would say to Alex that stops him.  Because he’s pretty sure it would be something like, _This time, when Shaw shows up, I promise I’ll listen to you when you say you don’t think we should attack him._ And he’s not sure how he would explain that exactly, especially since he and Alex really didn’t discuss it in words the first go-round, but rather in a body language he’s not sure they’ve managed to learn from each other at this particular point in time.

Which reminds him: he needs to find out what day it is.  He knows that he has to be back in 1962 sometime before Shaw attacked.  But he doesn’t know how far back he is, if the attack will take place tomorrow, or in three days, or perhaps as long as a week from now.

Hell, he doesn’t even know if Alex has been recruited yet.  He and Sean were the last two people to join up way back in the day.

 _‘Way back_ ,’ he thinks, dropping his face into his hands.  _I guess technically it’s not so ‘way back’ anymore._

He sighs, and lies back against the pillow.  Closes his eyes.  Tells himself that he should get some sleep.  That if he’s going to do things right this time around, he should try to dream about the two and a half decades he spent as Armando, to wipe away the weird “time travel” hangover he’s feeling, to ground himself in the here and now.

To forget the fact that he’s pretty sure he spent a little over sixty years drifting around as a cloud of dust.

“Okay,” he says, as he sits up, throws the covers off, and plants his feet on the floor.  “Okay,” he says as he gets up, pulls on some clothes, and walks out into the hall.  “Plan B, it is,” he says, as he begins wandering around the empty floors of the compound.

It’s a logical thing for him to be doing, he thinks.  He needs information more than sleep.  And he doesn’t want to be counting on decades old memories if he’s going to be living in this place over the next few days.

 Although his memories seem to be doing a fine job of taking his body right up to Alex’s door.  And it is Alex’s door.  There is no part of him that doubts that this is exactly where Alex should be.

 _Ah, to hell with it_ , he thinks, as he lifts his hand and knocks, briskly counting out the pattern that he _knows_ he and Alex had long ago agreed would mean, _It’s me and everything’s okay._   And everything will be okay, he thinks, if he can just convince the worst of his nerves to calm themselves down.  The trick to living with his mutation has always been to trust his instincts, to have faith that his body would be able to adapt, even if his brain wasn’t all that sure about what was going on.  Granted, that particular philosophy hadn’t worked out so well for him the last time he tried it.  But if he started doubting himself now….

 _I can’t live like that_ , he tells himself, as the door knob starts to turn.  _I can’t live without being able to trust myself.  Because if I can’t do that, then I can guarantee that absolutely nothing I do is going to turn out right._

And he desperately wants things to go right this time around, he thinks, as the door slowly opens.  Yes, he definitely needs every little thing to go right.

Although exactly what he means by that doesn’t make sense to him until he sees Alex leaning against the doorjamb.  Until he sees him yawning and stretching, lamplight casting shadows on the skin of his chest and arms and abdomen and even the strip of skin just beneath the gaping waistband of the beat-up pair of sweatpants Alex wore to bed.  His blond hair’s a mess and his blue eyes are barely open slits, and he’s so…so….   

 So “what,” Armando isn’t sure.  He just knows that he needs to step forward and wrap his arms around Alex’s waist, to pull him in and hold him tight, even as Alex mutters questioning syllables that slowly morph into a full-blown “What the Hell?”

And then there aren’t any more questions because Armando has his hands on Alex’s face, and his lips are pressing into Alex’s, and a half a breath later, Armando is—

 Oh, Armando is kissing him.

He’s kissing Alex.

And this is something they definitely didn’t do before, he thinks.  He would have remembered it, if they had.

Because this is very memorable, these sensations he’s feeling here.  Alex’s disdain for wearing a shirt to bed means there’s bare skin—lots and lots of bare skin—and it’s so warm; he always knew that someone with Alex’s powers would be warm.  And Armando’s hands are sliding across every bit of that skin they can touch, and his mouth has moved its way down Alex’s jaw, down to his neck, and he’s licking and biting it, which he shouldn’t do because that could leave marks.  But he doesn’t want to stop himself, doesn’t even think he could stop himself, not after it’s been so _long_.

It’s been so long since he touched _anyone,_ much less this one person that he’s beginning to realize was the reason he cared enough to hang around.  The reason he held on to his mind and the last bit of his memories and didn’t just embrace his new form and let himself go with the flow.

He’s not just here for Alex’s sake.  He’s here for _Alex_.

And it’s this thought that causes him to pull back and take a moment before he allows his actions to get completely out of hand.

They’re no longer standing in the doorway, he sees, and dimly he remembers taking a few steps into the room, as Alex’s body gave way before him.  He thinks he must have also kicked the door shut because he’s fairly sure from the stunned look on Alex’s face that getting them some privacy was probably the last thing on his mind, not while he’s so obviously still trying to figure out just what the Hell is going on.

Sure enough, now that Armando’s given him a chance to speak, he’s whispering, “What are you doing?  You’ve never…you’ve never said anything….”

Armando can feel himself smiling.  “I know,” he says, his hands still rubbing light little trails over the skin on Alex’s upper arms.  “And I’m pretty sure I had reasons for that.  Damn good ones.  But now….”  He shakes his head and wonders how much he should say.  “Now, I’m thinking there’s only one good reason for us to not try taking our relationship further, to not want to make this something more than just friendship.” 

He pauses, and finds himself looking down, as he steels himself to take a deep breath and forces himself to let go and step away.  “And that’s if you don’t want us to," he says.  "So if you want me to go, I will.  But otherwise….”

He shakes his head again and doesn’t dare look up, afraid that Alex will be able to see sixty years’ worth of desperation lurking in his eyes.  “Otherwise,” he says again, “I’m hoping you’ll let me stay.  And that we’ll have a chance to figure out everything we could possibly mean to each other.”  He closes his mouth and swallows, a dry cough building in his throat, before his mutation kicks in and carries the dryness away.  “Because I think we have the potential to be something really great here.  If we can just hang on long enough…”  He lifts his gaze up from his feet and finds himself staring right into Alex’s pretty blue eyes.  “If we can…well, then I have this feeling that we’re both going to be amazed...absolutely amazed...at how good it’s going to be.”

He reaches out and places his hand on top of one of Alex’s bare shoulders.  “So, what do you think?  You willing to trust me on this?  Or do you want me to let this go and just back away?”

The words are barely out of his mouth before Alex reaches up and covers Armando’s hand with one of his own.  “Just tell me this,” he says, as his fingers wrap themselves up with Armando’s.  “Will we still be friends?  No matter what happens?  You won’t…you won’t….”  He stops and takes a deep breath, his eyes blinking rapidly as he swallows.  “You won’t let anything that happens push you away?”

It’s only the obvious importance of his answer that keeps Armando from laughing out loud.  “Oh. No,” he says, his head shaking, as his other hand comes up and lays itself on Alex’s cheek.  “Definitely, definitely no.  Alex…I can honestly say that it would take a Hell of a lot to get me to leave you.  And even then, even then….”  He can’t help it.  He just has to stop and kiss him.  “Even then, I would do everything I could to get back to you,” he says, taking the shortest of all possible breaths before kissing him again.  “Not even the end of the world itself would stop me.  That’s how hard it’s going to be for you to get rid of me.”

He’s still kissing him when it occurs to him that he’s sort of taken it for granted that Alex is saying _Yes_ to him.  That he didn’t actually hear him put it into words.

“Hey,” he says as he pulls back, one hand still on Alex’s arm, his brain already forming the question, _So what we’re doing is okay then?_

He doesn’t get a chance to ask it though.

Because this time, it’s Alex who’s wrapping his arms around Armando and dragging him down so that he can bite at his lips.

And as Armando gives in and lets him, he finds himself thinking that there’s just really nothing else left to say.

 

The next day brings with it a sense of relief that Armando didn’t realize he needed.  Namely, that his little trip backwards through time really happened.  That he’s not still a cloud of dust drifting his way through the twenty-first century, and dreaming that he’s gone back to 1962.   

Because he can’t imagine that any dream of his would include having a CIA agent mutter a racially charged insult at him as they pass each other in the corridor.  Or that other agents would be walking around leering at Angel with such ill-concealed contempt.

It reminds him that his relationship with Alex wasn’t the only thing that needed fixing.  That the horrible events he saw in the head of that time traveler who gave him the ability to come back here are still hanging out there, just waiting to occur.

He wonders if that traveler was successful in his quest.  If he managed to create a reality he found worth living for.

If not, Armando thinks, as he discreetly wraps his hand around Alex’s wrist and leads him back to the pinball machine, well, maybe there are actions he and Alex can take over the next few years that might make it easier for that traveler to achieve what he wanted.

In any case, he knows that it will be he and Alex working together to try to make that happen.

Because he’s planning on using everything he remembers to make sure that his future evolves with Alex always by his side.

  

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 


End file.
